There is a new Radeon X1900
series
graphics card waiting in the wings. According to internal documents,
ATI is set to release a single-slot Radeon X1900 GT with 36 pixel shaders. The card is in effect, a cut-down version of the Radeon
X1900 XTX and is positioned to go toe-to-toe with
NVIDIA's popular GeForce 7900 GT in performance and in price. CrossFire support can be enabled with an
external cable connection to a Radeon X1900 512MB CrossFire Edition
graphics card.

Qualification samples of
the Radeon
X1900 GT are available now with production starting the week of April 14th.
According to ATI, support for the X1900 GT will be added in Catalyst
driver 6.4 (ver 8.241) -- which ATI expects to release tommorow or the day after.

Here are the specs for the
new card in
comparison to the Radeon X1900 XTX:

Radeon X1900 GT

Radeon X1900 XTX

Pixel Shaders

36

48

Core Clock

575MHz

650MHz

Memory
Size

256MB

512MB

Memory Clock

600MHz/1.2GHz

775MHz/1.55GHz

The ATI part number for the X1900GT will be 100-435803. Samples are already apparently shipping to certain vendors and media. The X1900GT will only require a single slot cooling solution, but it is up to the AIB partners to specify the exact cooler desired.

Current GeForce 7900GT cards retail for just over $300. Vendors tell us pricing has not been officially announced, but that every sign seems to indicate that the X1900 GT will show up priced at or below that $300 magic mark. Since the Radeon X1900 GT is based on the R580 ASIC, there is already talk that an "unlock" might be in the works to convert an X1900 GT into a full blown X1900 XT. Coupled with good heat sink solutions, and ATI's new stance on overclocking, the Radeon X1900 GT might be the next killer card this summer.